Just a few days ago Ariza Ghazale was preparing to come home. After three years living in Kazakhstan with her husband and their four children, they were moving back to Malaysia filled with anticipation and dreams.

Muhammad Afzal, one of her three teenage boys, took to Facebook to bid farewell to friends in the Kazakh city of Atyrau.

“Unfortunately it seems like I'm never going to come back here, at least not in the near future,” the 17-year-old wrote. “It has been one heck of a journey.”

The family of six had been due to touch down in Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of last Friday morning to begin their new life. But like the 283 other passengers and 15 crew members they never arrived.

“It happened in the blink of an eye,” said Zulrusdi bin Haji Mohamad Hol, her cousin, told The Telegraph. “The whole family. Six of them. Nothing is left.”

He held a copy of the day’s newspaper in which his relatives’ names were sprinkled through a full-page list of the 298 people killed when the Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down.

Ariza Ghazale - victim number 63 - had been an engineer, and Tambi Jiee, her 49-year-old husband, an employee of Shell whose work had taken them overseas and was now bringing them home.

His name lay in 99th place in the obituary list surrounded by those of their four children: 19-year-old Mohd Afif, 17-year-old Mohd Afzal, 13-year-old Mohd Afruz and a daughter, 15-year-old Marsha Azmeena.

“I could accept it when my mother died three months ago: she was sick and old and feeble," said Mr Mohamad Hol, the relative. "But this happened in the blink of an eye. We just can’t believe it."

He described his cousin as “an intelligent woman” and a loving mother. “We are the same age. I am 46. She is 46 too. We sat O-levels together in 1985. She studied in the US.”

Now relatives were seeking comfort in their Muslim faith, he said.

“We accept this as a test from God. Life and death are tests. God will test you in this life and the life after. It is fate and destiny. Pre-destination.”

Friends in Kazakhstan left tributes on Facebook, underneath photographs of the smiling six-member family that no longer exists.

“It was a pleasure knowing you,” wrote one. “You'll always be in our heart. Hope you have a better life up there. Someday, I will go there and meet you again.”